Roasted butternut squash soup with a little cashew milk

This doubled batch uses 1 cup cashew milk, ½ teaspoon fine salt, ¼ teaspoon MSG, and 1 teaspoon cider vinegar for the entire pot. It doubles the adapted recipe’s squash, onion, garlic, herbs, ginger, and total olive oil while keeping the roasting-based method.

Source recipe: Love & Lemons — Butternut Squash Soup

Time: Allow about 55–65 minutes, including roughly 20 minutes of hands-on work. The cooking times do not double; allow extra time if you need to roast the trays in batches.

Servings: Twelve equal portions by finished weight, at approximately 150 calories each using the ingredient weights below. The exact grams per portion depend on evaporation and how much broth you use; the weighing method is below.

Ingredients

Squash-weight clarification: Love & Lemons specifies a roughly 3-pound whole squash. Its recipe developer confirms that approximately 2½ pounds of prepared squash works for the source recipe; this doubled version uses 5 pounds of prepared squash. Weighing the flesh avoids counting discarded skin and seeds as food. (Source recipe)

For the broth, Pacific Foods Low Sodium Organic Vegetable Broth is a suitable reference: its label lists 10 calories and 120 mg sodium per 240 mL. For the cashew milk, the calculation uses Silk Unsweet Cashewmilk, with 25 calories and 150 mg sodium per 240 mL. Equivalent products are fine; use their package labels when they differ. (Pacific Foods; Silk)

Instructions

1. Roast the squash

Heat the oven to 400°F / 205°C. Line two large rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper. Use a third if needed to give the cubes some space, and keep them in one layer.

Toss the prepared squash thoroughly with 2 tablespoons of the measured olive oil. Spread it in one layer. Do not add extra oil or salt beyond the ingredient list.

Roast for 30–40 minutes, turning the cubes around halfway through. Start checking at 30 minutes: the edges should be golden brown, and a fork should slide easily through the centers. Continue a little longer if necessary. This follows Love & Lemons’ separate roasting method, with a little flexibility in timing for your oven and cube size. (Roasting method)

2. Soften the onion while the squash finishes roasting

When the squash has roughly 10 minutes left, warm the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large soup pot over medium heat.

Add the onion, ½ teaspoon salt, and black pepper. Stir occasionally for 5–8 minutes, until the onion is soft. Avoid letting it turn dark brown. If it is ready before the squash, take the pot off the heat temporarily.

3. Add the aromatics, squash, and broth

With the pot over medium heat, stir in the garlic, sage, rosemary, and ginger. Cook for 30–60 seconds, just until fragrant.

Add the roasted squash, scraping in any clinging oil, followed by 5 cups / 1,200 mL broth. Bring to a gentle boil, cover, and lower the heat. Simmer for 5–10 minutes.

The squash is already cooked, so you do not need the original recipe’s longer simmer. Any pieces that are still firm should be allowed to soften fully before blending.

4. Blend with the cashew milk

Take the pot off the heat and let the soup cool slightly. Add the 1 cup / 240 mL cashew milk, then blend until completely smooth.

For a countertop blender, work in batches and follow its hot-liquid instructions, allowing steam to escape. Do not use a sealed smoothie cup for hot soup. An immersion blender also works; take enough time to eliminate small vegetable pieces.

Return the blended soup to the pot.

5. Adjust the thickness

Stir in the reserved broth ½ cup / 120 mL at a time, using up to the full additional 2 cups.

Stop when the soup pours easily but still coats a spoon. You do not have to use all the reserved broth. The total liquid will be 6–8 cups, including the cashew milk—not 6–8 cups of broth plus the milk.

Warm gently as needed.

6. Add the tiny finishing seasonings

Stir in ¼ teaspoon MSG until dissolved. Turn off the heat, then stir in 1 teaspoon apple-cider vinegar.

Taste a spoonful after it has cooled enough to judge properly. These are deliberately restrained additions; do not automatically add more vinegar or MSG. Add another small pinch of salt only if the soup genuinely needs it.

Serve plain or with a little parsley. Any extra salt, oil, seeds, or bread should be counted separately.

Calories and serving size

Calculated estimate: approximately 1,800 calories for the entire pot, or 150 calories per twelfth of the finished batch.

That calculation assumes the stated raw, edible ingredient weights, the two reference products, and all 7 cups / 1,680 mL of broth. It counts the full olive oil amount rather than guessing how much might remain on the baking sheet.

The squash, onion, oil, and garlic figures use USDA Standard Reference data reproduced by MyFoodData; the liquid figures come from the manufacturers’ labels. The small-seasoning allowance avoids pretending that spoonfuls of fresh herbs have precisely known weights. (MyFoodData — raw butternut squash; Pacific Foods; Silk)

Using only the initial 5 cups of broth reduces the total to approximately 1,780 calories, or 148 calories per twelfth. That difference is small enough that 150 per twelfth remains a sensible logging estimate.

What exactly is one serving?

One serving is one-twelfth of the finished soup’s weight, excluding the pot. It is not automatically one cup or a fixed number of grams.

After blending and making the final liquid adjustment, weigh the soup in a tared container—or subtract the empty pot’s weight from the filled pot’s weight, provided your scale can safely handle it. Stir thoroughly, then divide the net weight by twelve.

For example:

These are examples, not promised yields. Defining servings this way accounts for the water lost during roasting and simmering without requiring you to dilute the soup to an arbitrary target weight.

For a bowl of any size:

Bowl calories ≈ 1,800 × bowl weight in grams ÷ finished batch weight in grams.

So, if the finished soup weighs 4,000 g, a 400 g bowl is approximately 180 calories.

The arithmetic is reproducible, but the result is still a food-composition estimate: squash naturally varies, and package labels are rounded. About 150 calories per twelfth of this measured-ingredient batch is the useful number—not a claim of laboratory precision.

Sodium

With the reference broth and milk, 3 g salt, and 1 g MSG, the calculated estimate is approximately 200 mg sodium per twelfth of the pot, before extra seasoning or toppings. The main contributions to the whole batch are about 840 mg from broth, 150 mg from cashew milk, 1,180 mg from salt, and 120 mg from MSG, plus the small amount naturally present in the vegetables. MSG contributes sodium; it is not sodium-free. (Pacific Foods; Silk)